Human Action is the most important book on political economy you will ever own. It was (and remains) the most comprehensive, systematic, forthright, and powerful defense of the economics of liberty ever written. This is the Scholars Edition: accept no substitute. You will treasure this volume.
The Scholars Edition is the original, unaltered treatise (originally published in 1949) that shaped a generation of Austrians and made possible the intellectual movement that is leading the global charge for free markets.
Made available for the first time in decades, exclusively through the Ludwig von Mises Institute, this edition is the one to own (the 2nd edition was thoroughly botched, while the 3rd deletes valuable material and introduces some ambiguities; the 4th edition, currently in print, is the 3rd edition with a new foreword).
- The pagination of the original 1949 edition is preserved, but it also includes invaluable additions.
- Using extraordinary materials and the best of modern technology, combined with ancient standards of craftsmanship in the tradition of Oxford University's Clarendon Press, this magnificent work is produced for the ages.
- Includes the 1954 index prepared under Mises's supervision, the most complete ever published, united here with the book for the first time.
- The introduction, by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Jeffrey Herbener, and Joseph Salerno--based on newly discovered archives--tells of the tragic and glorious history of this seminal work, and of its bright future as the manifesto of liberty.
- Protected by a strong slipcase from the famous Old Dominion company.
All told, The Scholars Edition looks exactly like the classic work it is, ready for a lifetime (or two) of use.
Mises himself wrote the following by way of explanation of why he wrote the book:
Economics does not allow any breaking up into special branches. It invariably deals with the interconnectedness of all phenomena of acting and economizing. All economic facts mutually condition one another. Each of the various economic problems must be dealt with in the frame of a comprehensive system assigning its due place and weight to every aspect of human wants and desires. All monographs remain fragmentary if not integrated into a systematic treatment of the whole body of social and economic relations.
To provide such a comprehensive analysis is the task of my book Human Action , a Treatise on Economics. It is the consummation of lifelong studies and investigations, the precipitate of half a century of experience. I saw the forces operating which could not but annihilate the high civilization and prosperity of Europe. In writing my book, I was hoping to contribute to the endeavors of our most eminent contemporaries to prevent this country from following the path which leads to the abyss.
The Scholars Edition of Human Action is the definitive edition of this great work and foundation of every library of freedom.
ISBN 0-945466-24-2
956 pp. (hb)